Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Background & Significance: Season 13 of Doctor Who is perhaps one of the best seasons of television the show ever experienced. After a season of stories coordinated by the previous production team, this new start allowed Holmes to sculpt the show into whatever he wanted it to be. As we've discussed previously, this resulted in a season full of horror pastiches and sendups. Mummies, mutant plants, shapeshifters, body snatchers...

And now? Frankenstein.

"Brain of Morbius" comes at the exact halfway point of their era and represents the pinnacle of the Hinchcliffe/Holmes vision for the show. Originally written by Terrance Dicks (the original version had an aesthetically-challenged robot that cobbled together a body for the wrecked Morbius based on its own warped view of human anatomy), it was eventually almost completely re-written by Robert Holmes, so much so that Dicks asked his name be removed from the writing credit. As such, it's really a Holmesian contribution to Doctor Who and to say otherwise is massive, massive self-deception (as we'll discuss) because... well... it's a Holmes story, isn't it?

So let's get to it!

Commentary!:

Part 1:

Truly, this is the Gothic era of Doctor Who. I mean, you’d be foolish to not recognize that
instantly.

What I love about this is… based purely on its design and
production aesthetic this reminds me about why this era is one of my favorites
ever. No other era gets exactly what they’re going for so exactly right. There
is no ambiguity or second guessing with any element of anything in this story
so far. Compare it to the Pertwee or Williams eras and you can tell. In those
stories you’d have sets and corridors that were terribly generic. Sci-fi has a
sci-fi look. Here, though, it’s terribly terribly different. And what
Hinchcliffe/Holmes churn out is impossibly unique. Look at what Sarah wears: it’s
terribly terriby Gothic in the way that this era tends to skew Gothic. And yet
it feels like an outfit that’s from the future. It’s true Gothic sci-fi, isn’t
it? And there’s not anything around that does such an incredible job of
blending two such broad styles into something impossibly esoteric.

The thing about esoteric? It comes with confidence. Because
it has to. You’re hitting something with such specificity that it has its own
adjective to describe the level of specificity.

That’s this whole episode though. We’ve talked about every
other story in this era (hell, every 4th Doctor story except this
one) and this one comes with… confidence that the others don’t have. That’s not
to say other stories aren’t confident. There’s plenty from this era that are (“Ark in Space” and “The Deadly Assassin” come to mind), but where those stories ARE
confident they’re somewhat… lesseneded(?) by the way the almost showmanship and
running around. The first episode of “Ark in Space” is nothing but a showman
tour of an empty space station starring nothing but our three leads. And that’s
fine, but you can almost see Holmes working to keep you entertained. Same with “The
Deadly Assassin”. Awesome episode with an awesome cliffhanger, but it does
nothing but mark time until the breathtaking cliffhanger.

Here, Holmes feels so much more assured than anything else.
And I don’t know if that’s remnants of Terrence Dicks showing off his impressive
ability to write a cracking yarn with Holmes grafting an impossibly compelling story
onto the already-solid structure, but the point stands. There’s nothing about
this that isn’t remarkably specific in its scope or its layout. I mean, something
like half this episode is The Doctor and Sarah Jane sitting down for supper
with Solon and it never feels like it drags, it never feels like it’s
superfluous. And really, the only thing that goes down at dinner is The Doctor
after he realizes he’s just been drugged. It’s a powerful moment and a key
turning point for Solon where we confirm that he’s the mad scientist we suspect
he is.

Then again, everything about Solon is shadowed in the first
few minutes. He is stark raving mad and he has a weird obsession with heads.
What’s not to love? But I’ll have more to say on him later as we dig deeper
into who he is.

And again, that’s why this episode is so brilliant. At no
point does it feel showmanesque. At no point does it feel like Robert Holmes is
TRYING to get your attention. The same can’t be said about just about any other
story this season. No. This episode makes it clear when it opens with a
cold-blooded murder that isn’t played fast or quick, it’s played for the slow
horror of Condo stalking his weakened prey and decapitating it once he gets the
drop on it. Any other story would have played it with much more mystery. More
focus on the creature. More focus on its hunter. But the thing about Condo (and
we learn it almost right off) is he’s a man with a vicious hook for a hand and
ain’t nothing going to stop him using that hook, especially because he knows
how to use it.

So it’s specific, yes, but also interesting because Holmes
knows The Doctor so well by this point that he can even get The Doctor into the
story when The Doctor refuses not to. The Doctor has no interest in being a
Time Lord patsy at this point. He’s had enough of the Time Lords steering his
TARDIS and telling him what to do. So he throws Sarah Jane into a situation
where she has to scream and suddenly The Doctor is up and at ’em, ready to
carpe whatever diem needs saving. It’s a wonderful hook for The Doctor. Of
course he’s not going to do what the Time Lords tell him. But throw his best
friend in danger and you can sure as hell bet he’s gonna come running, isn’t
he? And then when it comes to The Doctor in Solon’s castle (as the Sisters call
it), it’s almost as if The Doctor has an idea what’s going on, but plays the
buffoon to learn what it is he wants to learn. Morbius comes up in conversation
and early on. We as the audience know Morbius is important (it’s in the title).
So when we hear it our ears prick up. But Holmes keeps the suspense going by enticing
us to keep watching and learn more.

All of this, of course, is well-earned. The stuff with the
Sisterhood of Karn is perhaps the only weak point of the episode, and even then
they’re totally watchable. They’re a wonderful contrast to the “hard science”
of Solon. A bunch of female mystics? I’m in for that. AND THEY STOLE THE
DOCTOR. WHAT?!

It’s a stellar episode, and I’m sure I’ll say more, but
twenty five minutes in and I can’t wait to pound out the rest of these. There’s
nothing I don’t love about this. Nothing. And I’m impossibly sad because I know
that in just three short episodes time I’m going to leave behind the Most
Gothic Mark on Doctor Who this side
of anywhere. And I don’t want to. I just want to stay here, in these sets,
dealing with these problems, forever. It’s.. god, it’s wonderful. Yes. I know I
can come back later. Of course I can come back later and re-watch it. But if
this feeling, this world, this planet was a season? Christ almighty it would be
my favorite season.

So “Brain of Morbius” was designed as a cost-cutting move to
pinch some pennies after the rest of the season’s expenses. And clearly. I
mean, every other story this season has location shooting! A massive cast! And
like, sure. “Planet of Evil” didn’t have location shooting. But it did have
ornate sets and special effects.

Here, Brain of Morbius HAS no effects. There’s the power
ring of the Sisters’ High Priestess Maren giving a small blue beam, but other
than that there’s nothing. Just fire. But that’s something we’ve managed to
make for VERY cheap nowadays, and it couldn’t have been that much more
expensive in the mid-70s than it is nowadays. And in terms of sets? There’s the
one set for the sisters, a set for the exteriors, and then a few sets for Solon’s
castle. But really, that’s only three locales, isn’t it? And the whole story
bounces between the Sisters and Solon’s castle with some “exteriors” of the
cliffs to transition between the two.

In terms of scope, it’s actually brilliant. It keeps the
cost down, but also keeps the story moving. Whatever happens next, narratively,
will happen at either the Sister camp OR Solon’s castle. Last episode saw most
things happen at Solon’s castle. Here, we move to the Sister Camp.

What’s interesting about this episode, though, is that scenes
are allowed to be long, and extensive. Solon meeting with Maren and bargaining
for The Doctor’s life is something that seems to take a while, doesn’t it?
Hell, The Doctor and Maren discussing the history of Morbius and how dead
Morbius surely must be is essentially six minutes of argumentation, split up by
a minute or two of Solon and Condo walking down to the Sisterhood’s lair. And
it’s impossibly compelling. Remember how in “The Two Doctors” Holmes did a
massive six minute scene towards the start of episode two? What’s interesting
here is that Holmes is basically doing the same exact thing, but making it
interesting by focusing on the characters and the urgency of what’s happening
with the plot.

In this case, the explanations are fantastic, aren’t they?
Morbius is dead. Atomized. And The Doctor and Maren agree on that. Only… what
if he isn’t?

And isn’t that “isn’t” the compelling bit of everything?
What if the evil guy isn’t dead like you thought he was? You see it in science
fiction and genre stuff all time, don’t you? This once-vanquished foe returning
from beyond the grave is incredibly exciting. And yes, we hear nothing but
hearsay in this. But it clearly means something. Clearly the Time Lords did
send The Doctor here and clearly the Sisterhood is here for some reason (they
have a treaty with Gallifrey so they must be important). And they have great
power. And The Doctor and Sarah are caught between these two extremes: on the
one side a mad scientist and on the other a tribe of female mystics.

My god. Could you want for anything more?

I love that the two extremes are not really right. Solon is
clearly the bad guy here, what with his genetic experiments and mad scientist
ways and poisoning The Doctor. But neither is the Sisterhood on The Doctor’s
side. Yes, they consider Morbius their mortal enemy and are allied with The
Doctor on that, but they also string him up and expect him to burn for his
supposed crimes. It keeps the Sisters wrapped in an enigma and a big fat
question mark moving forward. We’ve no idea where it’s going with them, but because
they’re one of the only elements in the story (the other being Solon, Condo,
and Morbius himself) it points to the notion that they are not superfluous. Nor
would they be. And that’s… key.

Beyond that, though, everything about them is wonderful. The
whispering. The dancing. The ritual. All of it is… fascinating and compelling.
And I can’t get enough of it.

Then we have the stuff with Solon and Condo and Condo’s
demanding that Solon return his arm. I love the chink in the armor, here. That
Condo is already turning on Solon points to the fact that their relationship is
on the outs and perhaps has been for some time. Not only that, but Condo has a
power over Solon that he perhaps doesn’t recognize. He threatens Solon with his
life and Solon knows that Condo will make good on that promise. But the two
need each other. Condo needs someone who can carry him through difficult challenges
that he’s not mentally equipped for while Solon desperately needs muscle/an
assistant who can help him when he needs help.

Yet, there’s also the idea that Solon is almost ready to be
free of Condo. He recognizes that Condo is a liability and freely sacrifices
him in light of the forthcoming rise of Morbius, which is only possible if he
can obtain The Doctor.

It’s a wonderful dynamic and yet another Holmesian double
act within the story. Only Solon bridges the gap two ways. How often does
Holmes do a servant-character who’s a proxy for the disfigured,
unable-to-interact with the world character? The answer is somewhere in the
range of “often”. And (as we learn in this episode) Solon is Morbius’s proxy
(because Morbius is a brain in a jar). But so too is Condo Solon’s proxy for
the outside world. Condo is constantly going out and hunting down whoever
crashes on Karn and bringing them back to the castle. It’s a nice touch, but Condo
is also horrific and disfigured (if there are standards for such things) while
Solon is good looking and handsome. So we have something of an inversion of the
traditional Holmes role, don’t we?

And on top of all this we have The Doctor and Sarah. Tom
Baker, naturally, is excellent here. Terribly Doctory. Terribly clever. But
Sladen is great selling Sarah’s despondency at being suddenly and surprisingly
blinded by Maren’s power ring.

Here’s my question, though. And perhaps we can answer this
later, but what does the story gain from making Sarah blind here? Yes, it means
the shocking reveal of Morbius’s brain relegates the brain reveal to an almost
extreme dramatic irony. Other than that, though, I don’t know the point we’re
making here. Is it about sight and seeing? Are other characters thematically or
metaphorically blinded? Solon, surely because his quest to restore Morbius
blinds him to everything else, or Maren and how her devotion to the sisterhood
blinds her to reason? Perhaps they’ll do something with it. As of now, though,
it’s relegated to a plot that sends The Doctor back to the Sisterhood and Solon
to prep for The Doctor’s head again. Which is not bad. I just want a thematic
tie to it.

That, though, is the epitome of a minor quibble. So clearly
I’m loving this. And I am. So much.

Part 3:

If this is a story about how The Doctor needs to stop the
rise of Morbius, what is the worst thing that could happen?

This episode continues much the same as the previous ones,
only here The Doctor doesn’t bounce back and forth. Or at least, not really. He
arrives at the lair of the Sisterhood and stays there until almost the end of
the episode, at which time he is carted back (caravanned back?) by the
Sisterhood. And that’s an interesting choice, but necessary. Because while The
Doctor is stuck at the Sisterhood’s lair we have Sarah Jane stuck at Solon’s
castle. And structurally, that’s brilliant because Holmes manages to tackle
both extremes of the narrative at the same time. So it’s quite clever, and it
allows The Doctor to settle what’s going on with the Sisterhood while terrible
things happen over at Solon’s castle.

Well. Not terrible things, perhaps. But really awful things.
Truly.

The Sisterhood storyline is interesting (yes, I’m not done
with it) because it features The Doctor mending a bridge the Time Lords had
previously burned. This elixir of theirs has magical healing properties that
allows the Sisterhood immortality and aids Time Lords suffering from
post-regenerative trauma. But the flame is dying and the Sisters have used the
last of the elixir, as their flame which produces it is going out. The Doctor
manages to restore the flame to its former glory (which he does by turning a
firecracker into a chimney sweep) and all is right in the world. The Sisterhood
trust him now. And it’s… good.

As a storyline, it’s lovely and I love how The Doctor brings
science to something indigenously thought of as “magic”. I mean, it speaks
poorly on their science skills. But the Sisterhood are built on stagnation.
They never age, never die. Their job is to keep the flame going and honor the
memory of Karn.

Now I think on it, isn’t that just Hestia? I mean, from
Greek Mythology. Isn’t Maren just Hestia with a backstory? Hestia’s whole job
on Earth is to protect and tend the flame at the top of Mount Olympus that it
might never go out. That’s her whole job. And that’s what the Sisterhood are doing.
They aren’t really paying attention to the world at large. If any ship comes
near them they smash it to the planet and leave it there. They just want to be
left alone and anything that distracts them from their goal they treat
with disdain and order it expunged. Hell, the only reason they leave Solon alone
is because he does nothing to bother them.

While over at Solon’s Castle we have… Morbius.

Yes. Morbius. At the end of the last episode we learned that
Morbius was just a brain in a jar, but Sarah Jane didn’t learn that because she’d
been blinded. But this here. This is the stuff. This is where we have Solon and
Morbius talking and candidly about what they’re to do now that the time is
running out. Solon is concerned because he doesn’t have The Doctor’s head, but
Morbius is more concerned that a Time Lord is near his vicinity. Morbius, it
seems, is more scared of The Time Lords than anything else, and what they did to him
scared the ever loving crap out of him. And it’s fantastic to see Morbius so
impossibly scared by such a seemingly simple thing. What would the Time Lords
do to a brain in a jar, I ask? What would they possibly do?

This accelerates Morbius’s plans. He cannot stay and orders
Solon to put him in a body even if it’s not ready. It won’t have to last for
long.

The result is the phenomenal reveal at the end of the
episode that pays off what we saw in the first. Hell, the cliffhanger to this
episode is a synthesis of the first and second cliffhangers. The first reveals
the body. The second reveals the brain. The third is the brain and body coming
together as Morbius rises to attack Sarah Jane. It’s gob-smackingly elegant and
powerfully effective. Morbius becomes a monster incarnate. What was before
monstrous in its scale (Morbius reduced to naught but a brain) is given life in
a horrific creature of marvelous design. It’s Frankenstein taken to its logical
conclusion: a hodge podge of different bodies and parts making something truly
monstrous. Hairy legs, Condo’s arm, a massive crab claw, feet with paws. It’s
just… glorious. Truly glorious.

Before this goes down, Solon puts on his mad scientist gear
(complete with that silly mirror head thing that is really just the cherry on
top of this story if you ask me) and prepares to put the brain in Morbius. It’s
cathartic to see, because we have Solon unbridled, at his most mad.

He’s so mad, in fact, that he murders (or appears to murder)
Condo in cold blood. Yes, it’s self-defense, but at the same time it’s really…
dark, isn’t it? And not just because the actual shooting is horribly horribly
graphic what with its squibs and the like, but Condo hardly deserved Solon’s
ire. All Condo wanted was his hand back. All he wanted was to be less
monstrous. It’s a stark contrast to Morbius, who wants to be monstrous, who will stop at nothing to have his body
back, a body, any body. Condo is disctonent with his hook for a hand, because
while it makes him a badass, it also makes him less human. Morbius, clearly,
cares not for his humanity.

And of course, Holmes takes the opportunity to go for some
marvelously dark comedy here. Marvelous dark. There’s nothing funnier than
watching a brain in a jar scream about how phenomenal its life would be if only
it had a body, nor is there anything better than seeing it fall on the floor.
Of course it falls on the floor. It’s a brain. And who knows what it picks up
when it’s there. I’m not saying Solon doesn’t have a clean lab, but what’s the
proper protocol for brain picker-uppery? Do you lightly brush it off? Perhaps
run it under the cold tap? Solon? No. He doesn’t care. He laments over it (in a
glorious moment of camp where he basically rhapsodizes over the brain itself
like Hamlet speaking over a skull. Only it’s a silly rubber brain. How
impossibly delightful and charming! But what would dropping it on the ground do
to a brain? Truly this is uncharted territory and something they’ll have to
pick up in the next episode.

It’s really quite excellent. And in a more-of-the-same kinda
way. What’s not to love, really? The scenes are long but it never drags. And it
leaves us in such interesting places.

Part 4:

And the witches run
it out of town.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before (my god, at this point,
this close to the end, what haven’t I mentioned before?), but I find that
sometimes I find it easy to forget that the writers I idolize, the ones I look
up to and respect for having rich narratives with deep emotional and
psychological gravitas, intricate thematic complexity, the ability to make me
laugh, elate, cry, despair, and the entire gamut in between are also giant
massive nerds. It took me a while to realize it, but I always thought that the
reason the Faith/Buffy showdown at the end of “Graduation Day Part 1” was
intense because it was a buildup of two rivals over the course of a season. It’s
a relationship built on jealousy and passion and far be it for me to cram in
some eighteen episodes of buildup for this paragraph, I’ll just say I missed
the really exciting, excellent point of the scene.

It’s a Slayer fight.

And it’s not the same thing as when Buffy fought Kendra in "What’s
My Line? Part 1". Because there the point is we had no idea it was Kendra or
that we were watching a Slayer Fight. But in “Graduation Day” it’s different.
The immediacy of the fight is in every second of the buildup and the sudden
rush up to them as the fight starts is nothing but geek catharsis. And that’s
the thing about Joss Whedon that I love about him: he’s so good at the
emotional and story stuff that I can often forget how much he loves the simple pleasures
of a story. The Slayer fights, the rocket launchers, seeing Reavers taking on
The Alliance. They’re the things that are… terribly populist, I suppose. It’s
mass appeal and entertains while the other moments (specifically the emotional
catharsis of those moments) shine through under the radar.

Robert Holmes, clearly, is a fanboy.

This isn’t a huge surprise. Or it shouldn’t be. This is the
guy who brought together Jago & Litefoot in the closing minutes of a story
and ended on a pig-cyborg firing a massive laser cannon at The Doctor.

So too, here, Holmes unleashes his inner fanboy. He’s
telling a Frankenstein story. So what do you want from a Frankenstein story?
Well clearly you want a savage monster traipsing through and about the wilderness.
It doesn’t matter if that was in Shelley’s original vision or not (it wasn’t,
but like I said it doesn’t matter) because this is the cultural perception of
Frankenstein we’re dealing with. And so Morbius traipses. And we have
Morbius (Frankenstein) slaying an innocent Sister of the Flame (virgin) and the
town rising up against in response.

Yet, Holmes also knows that he’s not just writing
Frankenstein. He’s dealing with a story in which The Doctor is going up against
a vicious and dangerous Time Lord, so you wanna see them spar.

Spar they do. The Doctor and Morbius against each other in a
game of Time Lord mind wrestling. Which is exactly what you want, isn’t it? And
to make it more fantastic he seems totally sane and totally verbally capable of
sparring with The Doctor (which is not easy). It’s perverse, and Barry does an
excellent job of keeping Morbius at a distance to not over emphasize the
character. It’s a stark contrast from the intimacy with which Barry shoots
Morbius when he’s in his feral, animalistic state at the beginning of the episode
and it makes Morbius seem that much scarier and more intimidating. The Doctor
and Sarah are keeping their distance in a way they hadn’t previously. Before it
was Morbius without tactical thinking. What happens now that he has that higher
reasoning?

So we have Frankenstein in the woods. We have a Time Lord meeting
of the minds. What’s left?

Oh right. The townsfolk running Frankenstein out of town.
With torches.

But that’s not enough. Holmes takes it one step further by
having the locals of Karn be the Sisterhood, or, if you wanna get really crass
about it: the witches of Karn. So the witches run the monster out of town with
their torches in hand. It’s… god is it good. And it’s exactly what you want
from this story. All of these things are. So Holmes is delivering the things we
want, the things we need. But he’s doing it in such a way that it feels
narratively cathartic rather than just fanboyishly cathartic. It’s fantastic to
see The Doctor go up against Morbius and it feels right to see the Sisterhood
banish their great foe once and for all. It’s just (again) cherry on top that
it fits into the framework of a Frankenstein story.

Then there’s the endgame, where the fight against Morbius
takes its mental toll on The Doctor and it leaves him in a near-death state. It’s
only with the elixir that he is restored and given new life again, and it’s
only with the sacrifice of Maren that this happens.

Really, it’s kind of a great end for The Sisterhood, or at
least, a great grace note on them. They fulfill a purpose and mend a bridge (in
this case, coming to a Time Lord’s aid in a time of need) and Maren is allowed
to die because she has seen her ultimate foe vanquished and does not feel the
need to carry on. Hell, as she says at the end, “some things must be allowed to
end.” It’s the lesson, really, and something she has to learn. It shows that
her and Solon were not so different at the start: both were continuing
traditions long past (in Solon’s case: Morbius’s life) and their unwillingness
to let things go led them to near ruin (Maren’s holding to tradition almost led
her to executing The Doctor, in other words, her own actions almost brought
about her own destruction).

She is allowed to die, and in return she deages a bit. Gets
younger. And dies. It’s a lovely end and exactly what I want to see at this
moment. The torch is passed on. The old burns away leaving the new in its
place.

And like a magician, The Doctor disappears in a bang and a
flash. Is there a more fitting end to a story than seeing that? No. Not really.
I mean. The Doctor is something of a magician and he blends technology and
science (Solon) with the wonder and mysticism of the Sisterhood. Why not go out
with a bang and a flash, a bit of atom and some thunder as he calls it? That’s
why he’s the best. Because he has the qualities of the good and the evil and
bridges them into something truly remarkable.

Truly, truly remarkable.

Final Thoughts?: This is one of the great 4th Doctor stories. And when I say "one of the greats" I mean one of the greats.

As I said earlier this is one of those stories that I just don't want to leave. When I started watching Classic Who I never expected I would gravitate so much to the Gothic Horror elements and yet I find them about my favorite thing the show has ever done.

Most of that is down to Hinchcliffe/Holmes. This is right in their wheelhouse and it's not hard to see why. The content of the story matches the feel of it so impossibly well that it makes other eras and other stories look worse by comparison. Even the Williams era never had so good a story that so specifically mixed its oeuvre as much as this matches this. Or at least... this is much more esoteric than those stories ever could've been. Solon's lab has to look a particular way. The hook on Condo's hand is perfectly jagged. Morbius himself is exquisitely cobbled together from bits and pieces to look as hodge-podge as he needs to. It's Frankenstein turned up to pure, complete horror.

There's also wonderful performances. Michael Spice is a wonderful voice of Morbius and the voice modulation they put on him is terribly perfect. It SOUNDS like a brain talking, doesn't it? It sounds like he's actually gargling. But also good is Philip Madoc as Solon. Madoc was in four Doctor Who stories, but this is his level best. He tears up the scenery and steals the whole show. I mean, we remember it for Morbius because he's titular and important and the villain of the end game. But Solon really steals the whole show with his mad lunatic ways, and Madoc (being the incredibly skilled character actor that he is) gets across the anguish and the torture as well as the insanely intense bile and pure evil he needs to have in order to be... well... evil. We never for a second think he wouldn't sacrifice Condo to the Sisterhood, nor that he wouldn't shoot Condo if he ever got the chance. But his work in the laboratory is extremely good. Seriously.

Know who's really good here? Tom Baker.

Now... this is funny, because here we are talking about the last Tom Baker story we have left to cover and I've come completely around on him. It's not that I ever actively hated Tom Baker [in public] but it's closer to the fact that I just didn't get it the first time around. But watching this I see why he's everyone's favorite Doctor. And why wouldn't he be? He's fantastic in every moment and he eats up this script like he does with few others. And that's not... bad. He eats up other scripts too, but it's clear here that he's on fire and really jiving with what it is Holmes is serving it up. He's The Doctor here and, because I seem to always like it more when Tom Baker is a bit more internal and subdued, this is really him at his best. I'm always trying to figure out what the best story for any given Doctor is and I'll be honest? This gets my vote.

It's... stellar. Really stellar. Barry's direction is wonderfully static but brimming with life and performance. Hinchliffe as a producer is on fire here. It's one of the real gems of its era. And yes, I know there's a lot of gems, but I honest to god can't think of a story that I like more than this. And it's not doing anything terrily flashy or wonderful, it's just doing everything that it's doing exceptionally well. It's fantastic Gothic horror. It's a brilliant adaptation of Frankenstein. It's just spectacular and on a scale that makes me love Doctor Who even more. I love the Holmesian epic, which is an epic that takes place on a small scale with a limited scope, making you envision the larger scope outside.

That's all this is. It's the story of the attempted resurrection of a long vanquished Time Lord. The whole thing only takes place on like... five sets. Which is nuts. And even the cast is small. It's just The Doctor, Sarah, Morbius, Solon, Condo, Maren, and one other member of the Sisterhood. And yet it feels broad, sweeping, epic.

A triumph in every sense of the word, and even then probably in senses that aren't even possible to convey. I am in awe and I'm coming back to it again and again. A top five Tom Baker story and absolutely deserving of all the praise and gushing I'm dishing out right now. That it's not more well-liked than "Seeds of Doom" or other stories in this season is laughable in the best of ways. What's not to love? It's, for lack of better term, nearly god damn perfect. And if that's not the highest praise I can give it, I don't know what is.

Next Time!: 3rd Doctor! Wolf-like creatures! A story within a story! An eyepatch! Fascism! And a parallel universe! Our final Jon Pertwee story is "Inferno!" Coming Next Tuesday!

About The Blog...

I'm a recentish Doctor Who fan (Summer 2008, really) who loves experiencing and discussing Doctor Who. From its triumphs to its flaws to its high points to its lows, we talk about it all and nothing is not fair game.

This blog discusses all the Doctors from Hartnell to McGann, covering all The Doctor Who stories from the classic run on television. Other people focus on the directing and the music and the performances, but my focus (because I work in television) is on the actual production, writing, and construction of these stories and you can find all of our entries via the index at the top of the blog.

You can also check out "The Doctor's Companion", a weekly audio podcast where my co-host Scott and I talk about all of Doctor Who. It's like this but a bit more casual and with tons of fun. You can subscribe to it in iTunes or download the shows directly and leave comments here.

It's a celebration of the best science fiction show of all time, a show we all know and love!